Call of Duty: Warzone
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone, delayed the planned Season 4 last week, as much of the video game industry pushed back launches and announcements in the wake of widespread social unrest protesting police brutality. The season was originally slated to begin on June 3, but the announcement of the delay did not contain a new date for the release of Season 4, presumably due to the fluid nature of the situation.
Now, a dataminer says that they’ve found the new release date in the game code. All leaks and rumors should be looked at skeptically, but they’re saying that the new release date in June 10.
I would take this thing with a shaker of salt. While this date may well be in the game code, my guess is that the developers had to put a new start date into the code because that’s just the way it’s written and that this does not yet indicate the actual plans of Activision or Infinity Ward. Of all the delayed events and announcements, I believe that Fortnite is the only one that specified a date for the postponed event, and that was June 15, considerably more cautious than June 10, just three days away.
It could still be true, of course, and it might even be the internal plan at the moment. It could still change if it had to.
It remains a tricky business for a video game company to decide when it’s “safe” to proceed as normal. It’s even trickier for something like Call of Duty, a series that has increasingly embraced militarism even if it occasionally pays a sort of lip service to complicated moral gray areas. This uncomfortable proximity to reality isn’t something that, say, Fortnite has to deal with. It’s also one of the biggest games on the planet, and that means that Activision and Infinity Ward have to tread lightly.
If this leaked date is indeed true, I would expect an announcement tomorrow at the latest, with details and roadmaps coming on Tuesday. However, I am not currently expecting to see that. My current guess would be June 16, or the Tuesday after next. But there’s really no predicting when this will actually come out, so right now we’re just waiting on word.
